I've included a (moderately creepy) sketch (made using "Dwarf Portrait") of a standard dwarf, a turkey, and an adult crundle:

6th of Galena, Year 407

We have our first batch of crundle eggs! They're... tough, and the little horned freaks don't like us taking them.

They'll make fine roasts.

We've started work outside the fortress -- we've decided to mine out the gabbro to make a sort of granite cavern. The natural curve of the aquifer in the east makes it rather natrual looking, for a cave.

We've also started carving out catacombs. All dead dwarves will get a coffin, a slab, and a personal engraving.

The first engraving is of dwarves prostrating before Savot Largecall, the femal dwarf deity of strength.

13th of Galena, Year 407

Gloomy has snatched a strange mix of materials and claimed a craftsdwarves shop. I'm interested to see what he produces.

We've also started to collect a lot of information on crundle training. Their bites are vicious, although most just annoying. Hopefully we can replace stinking chickens and turkeys with these prolific egg-layers.

Our experience stems from the incredible number of crundles we've been catching. We'll start slaughtering most of the males soon. Their meat will likely be tasty.

18th of Galena, Year 407

We're catching even more crundles. They won't stop fumbling into our traps. HAH!

On the plus side, we're learning a lot about training small, evil creatures.

Even better, we're finding that their intestines are delicious. No doubt soon to be a treasured delicacy.

3rd of Limestone, Year 407

We've finished the first floor of the necormancer's tower -- a simple library we're calling "The Treasury of Conjurers" (a random name, believe it or not).

We'll start assigning scholars (in particular, Gloomy) soon enough.

The statues are of Gloomy and Bim, the first dwarven necromancers of our civilization. Gloomy immortalized himself crafting a coffer of granite.

3rd of Sandstone, Year 407

We've built a testing chamber for the undead -- corpses can be placed in the chamber, and be locked in with the western gate.

The eastern gate hides a set of fortifications one can see through. We'll allow Gloomy to sit in the eastern observation chamber, place a hostile creature and a dead body in the testing chamber, and use the levers to allow Gloomy a safe view of the corpse and enemy.

Hopefully we can get something we can turn loose on potential invaders.

Despite not documenting it in a while, that abominable smoke hangs on the edge of our mind. It moves in massive clouds over the ocean, sometimes bathing the shore in its foul stench. Clouding vision. Threatening to cover us in necrosis.

We've done well to avoid it, so far.

25th of Sandstone, Year 407

Gloomy as produced his first scroll -- Doubts about Interviews. It's a piece that concerns using interviews as sources, and presumably, how Gloomy doubts that they're particularly good sources at all.

A interesting choice.

Interesting is that we've noticed some changes in Gloomy's personality. Lately he's been professing that he "would have all masters toppled." An strange quirk seeing as he's on track to be... well... our master.

He's seemed to have lost aversion to death, however, moving on to sympathy over such things. Perhaps a result of his avoiding it entirely?

21st of Timber, Year 407

Today we saw a clutch of quindecaplets hatch!

Beautiful horned baby crundles.

Beauiful baby crundles who won't stop breaking out and running all over the damn fortress.

We've decided that we're going to allow one clutch to hatch per egg-lay. We'll have maximum two generations alive at any one time, and slaughter the oldest every season. That should give them time to grow -- they start very, very small.

16th of Moonstone, Year 407

We've had a few tantruming dwarves, lately. All relatively recent immigrants from Helmsfirst. Today, one beat Gloomy bloody in the training room.

18th of Moonstone, Year 407

Luckily for us, two of the tantruming dwarves managed to beat each other into submission -- after beating several other dwarves.

ApplePie is getting a workout treating all the wounded.

17th of Moonstone, Year 407

The militia commander managed to kill one of our brewers -- punched him in the head and neck. The brewer later died in the hospital.

But... that laughter... Armok's beard, that laughter.

Urvad -- the militia commander, and one of the tantruming dwarves -- crawled his way out of his hospital bed, snatched a cleaver off the butcher's counter, and immediately cut down AleDiamond! Oh no!

He's currently gleefully butchering her corpse right where we prepare our crundle intestines!

While he's distracted, we've started to ask some of the troublemakers to leave. There really aren't that many -- four max.

We're sending them to Tally to sort out.

4th of Opal, Year 407

Urvad stumbled out of the butchers shop today, covered in the blood of AleDiamond. He retched on his own stink before raising a bloodied shield into the air -- a shield literally made out of AleDiamond's bones.

... We'll assign it to Gloomy immediately.

5th of Opal, Year 407

Gloomy has written another scroll -- this time, a commentary on the preparation and use of adhesive materials.

19th of Opal, Year 407

We've finished AleDiamond's final accommodations, in the crypt. We're not sure why the engravers chose the engraving they did, but it will have to do. She's been buried beside the brewer the Militia Commander murdered.

"Friend of minks." A fitting inscription. I guess.

She did like slabs? Now she's got her own!

We've asked the militia commander and his wife to leave. Good riddance.

That's all the tantruming dwarvs dead or gone.

1st of Granite, Year 408

Today was a wondeful day for dwarven inginuity! With spring comes the opening day of our new waterfall structure near the dining area -- seperating the cooking and farming from the tavern.

This should serve to clean dwarves off on their way back from the farms, and give them wonderful thoughts and experiences. Dwarves do love their waterfalls!

We've assembled a lever so that we can shut the mechanism off if need be (if it becomes unnecessary, or to save FPS).

The fortress continues to do well -- we're assigning a new broker as per Slagbottom's orders.

We'll give updates on all the dwarves of note next year. (Plenty of time for Cind to pick a new one... again. Sorry! hah!)

Winter's snow has not yet melted, and the sandy-shale beaches are covered in ice and sludge.

The Eternal Murk continues to stink, although the sea-breeze keeps it away. Unless the abominable smoke is drifting by, of course.

Our tower isn't much to look at from the surface, yet. But that will change in the coming days. The entire world will know the sight of Coastlabor -- and they will rue the day they ever crossed The Autumnal Irons!

They're rather large and bulky, and their nasty maw might make for formidable war animals. We suspect we can raise nymphs, if we can get a breeding pair.

6th of Felsite, Year 408

This has been a good year for capturing creatures!

This time we've captured blind cave ogres -- large relatives of the trolls.

As shown in this to-scale image, they're incredibly large. Again, "intelligent," so not exactly trainable. But they may be weaponzied by a creative dwarf.

15th of Felsite, Year 408

Armok's beard, today was a test of our mettle. Something let loose one of the trolls -- we suspect one of the crundles that's always running around.

Luckily for us it made its escape toward the caverns, and we were able to smash it over the head with a bridge. Multiple times.

2nd of Hematite, Year 408

Gloomy conducted his first necromancy experiment today. It seems the decayed chitin is not a suitable body for raising -- maybe the graspers needed to move have rotted away?

We'll have to try something else.

9th of Hematite, Year 408

Since the crundles won't stop escaping, we've starting tying them up at doors around the fortress. Hopefully they'll alert us of any intruders. We're using males, as the females are a useful source of eggs and are wasted at station points.

Gloomy has surprised us with another text -- a... well. He tried to right a comedic guide to using beakers.

It's... well, it's great, Gloomy. Good job.

Our work with the crundles continues to improve. We're starting to build muzzles so they stop biting the animal trainers.

15th of Malachite, Year 408

A foul hissing was heard coming from the caverns, today. A beast has come forth from its depths.

A massive creature -- a one-eyed... alligator looking thing. It's been spotted spitting webs at creatures, which it summarily bites the head off of.

It's very, very large.

It quickly made for our doors and smashed them to pieces -- we've closed the gate until we can come up with a plan to deal with it.

21st of Limestone, Year 408

We accepted dwarven traders today -- probably from The Armory of Blood. We've bought a copy of a book called "Ruin," which discusses the secrets of life and death. We've made it a personal item of Gloomy, so that the scholars don't get out of hand.

10th of Sandstone, Year 408

That creature is making a mess of the caves. We're still building a means by which to capture or kill it. Hopefully the bodies don't rot -- rutherer make for good meat.

The trap chamber is relatively simple -- we've build a support holding up a section of rock, a few statues to distract the creature, and some cave traps.

Best case scenario, we knock it out and catch it in a cage. Worst case, we kill it.

We're going to link some backup levers to the support and make a few more changes before testing it out.

24th of Sandstone, Year 408

Regrettably I don't have better illustrations to record, but we killed the beast! The cave-in smashed its skull in.

We're -quickly- moving to retrieve it before it rots.

25th of Sandstone, Year 408

... While cleaning up from the beast, we noticed some of the dwarves eyeballing the corpses with a familiar glimmer in their eye.

Once confronted, Melbil and Zan quickly admitted to sneaking into the necromancer's library and reading a book of magic!

It seems there was a second scroll detailing the secrets of life and death -- The Knowledge of Extinction. We forgot to control it.

THANKS TALLY. WE BLAME YOU.

9th of Timber, Year 408

Today... Today Morul 'Gloomy' Trademine realized his destiny! We placed the dead body of the one-eyed alligator in the test chamber, and Gloomy was able to reanimate it. And oh... oh, it's beautiful.

Shedim Onamtabmik's animated corpse is stronger than it everwas in life. It doesn't seem to have maintained its ability to shoot webs, but it painted the test chamber cyan with the troll's blood.

We'll start setting up a way to control its movements so that we can use it against our enemies.

Good work, Gloomy.

However...

There was an accident. One of the "new necromancers" doesn't seem to have as good of control of his powers.

Zan, on a whim, animated the corpse of a dead rutherer -- a massive, furry, cave-dwelling beast. The citizens surround it and beat it into submission, although not before it managed to kill one of the miners.

Thankfully Esthan, one of the other miners, put the beast down before anyone else was killed.

Maybe we need to rethink our body and animal parts pile:

22nd of Moonstone, Year 408

We've completed our first animal pit today -- a shallow pit with grates placed over the edges, so monster's can't escape. We'll train trainable creatures in many pits like these, and feed less-tame creatures in a similar manner.

We're going to CAPTURE it and use it to kill any other nasty beasts that wander out the caverns.

This creature is even LARGER than our zombified alligator-monster. We'll need to be careful.

1st of Obsidian, Year 408

A dwarf has produced a fanciful bobcat leather shield -- perhaps a dwarf would be interested in earning it. It would likely take an interesting idea to take such a treasure -- the silver alone is worth many Urists.

24th of Obsidian, Year 408

We're putting finishing touches on our monster trap. We'll lure the creature into the downstairs portion, and close a retracting bridge over it. From then on, our citizens will use the northern tunnel to access the caverns. If any more beasts come, we'll close all the tunnels off except the southern tunnel. Fortifications between the two tunnels should allow the pterosaur to spit boiling liquid over the intruder.

If the intruder wins, we'll just swap whitch chamber is the holding and which is the killing.

We've also started building a permenant chamber for our zombie-gator. It's a simple underground chamber with a pressure-plate linked to a gate. ApplePie's dog keeps producing puppies that we slaughter for meat, but we'll just start using them to lure zombies around instead.

We've tied a puppy up. Once we release the creature, hopefully it will stumble into the trap (looking to eat the puppy), step on the pressure plate, and seal itself in. We'll build a second so that we can cycle it back and forth when we want to release it.

1st of Granite, Year 409

And another year is done at Coastlabor -- a year that's been very productive indeed.

We've shuffled the administrative positions around some -- Gronkle is the new Militia Commander. We'll hopefully be pursuing some of the dreams of the notable dwarves, now -- though they're doing pretty damn well themselves.

You and Akaramu should come up with names and potential careers for the kiddos! You each pick one, maybe?

Whee I'm married! If one kid is a girl, I hereby name her Pumpkin. She shall pursue whatever career she's most interested in, but preferably something not too dangerous... mommy is a worrywart.

And the other shall be Named Bootstrap. Gronkle will likewise let them do whatever they are interested in, but will dissaprove if its not being a fisherman or miner. He might also show dissaproval even if they are, He believes all children should grow up with the dissaproval of their parents.

As Commander or captain or whatever, Titles confuse Gronkle. He suggests live training against these cave trolls.

You and Akaramu should come up with names and potential careers for the kiddos! You each pick one, maybe?

Whee I'm married! If one kid is a girl, I hereby name her Pumpkin. She shall pursue whatever career she's most interested in, but preferably something not too dangerous... mommy is a worrywart.

And the other shall be Named Bootstrap. Gronkle will likewise let them do whatever they are interested in, but will dissaprove if its not being a fisherman or miner. He might also show dissaproval even if they are, He believes all children should grow up with the dissaproval of their parents.

Bootstrap:

Pumpkin:

26th of Granite, Year 409

We've managed to trap the pterosaur! Hopefully our fortifactions work, and we can use it to kill other nasty creatures.

As Commander or captain or whatever, Titles confuse Gronkle. He suggests live training against these cave trolls.

The Commander has declared that the trolls be used for training -- we've set up a cage in the cavern.

Since there are only two full-time militia dwarves (the other dwarves just train with the militia), we decided to just send those two -- Commander Grinkle and Captain Sten.

Gronkle was armed with a steel war-hammer, Sten with a steel spear. They made -quick- work of the beast. Sten incapacitated the creature with a few well-placed stabs, Gronkle broke enough bones that it couldn't move, and Sten put it out of its misery.

Since it went down so easy, we may try breeding the trolls -- get more for practice.

7th of Felsite, Year 409

Work continues on the tower -- we intend for it to be many stories, so that it can house many useful... things. So far we've avoided any trouble with the evil smoke.

20th of Hematite, Year 409

Today was a good day for our breeding program -- new voracious cave crawlers have emerged. The pit will hopefully soon be writhing with them! (Mwa ha ha ha ha!)

11th of Limestone, Year 409

An un-notable summer has given way to fall, and with it, an excellent catch from the caves.

We've captured a cave dragon, apparently one the beasts we were looking for.

The adult female we've captured is relatively large -- many times larger than even the voracious cave crawlers. It's said they age very slowly -- taking 1000 years to reach their largest.

However, we expect they'll be large enough for war after, oh, say, a few centuries. Apparently this is one of the long-term goals of our outpost -- war dragons for taking back the homeland.

8th of Sandstone, Year 409

Our knowledge of the crundles grows -- we capture tens of them a season in the caverns. We train them. We butcher them. We cook them.

I'm getting a bit sick of crundle intestines.

12th of Sandstone, Year 409

We've finished the dragon pit, today.

Hopefully soon we can catch a male dragon, and start breeding little dragonlings.

21st of Sandstone, Year 409

We decided to start butchering the turkeys today -- we've an abundance of crundle eggs, and the turkeys are just... too much, at this point.

With the late fall coming, it seems a good time to eat turkey, although I'm not sure why.

Cheesecloth is doing a wonderful job processing the birds.

25th of Sandstone, Year 409

Another horrid creature was spotted in the depths -- this time, from the second cavern layer. We'll set our trap and hope it works.

10th of Opal, Year 409

We managed to trap the warbler -- it and the pterosaur are trading breaths of toxic emissions. We'll see who dies first!

Quite the thrilling read! Dwarf Fortress is always a game I enjoy more reading or watching other people play than I enjoy when I play it myself and these embarkments have been really interesting. It seems that the war against the goblins will be brutal with these war dragons.

I'd like to adopt a dwarf; TwoTankards because they drink with two tankards in the drinking hall. Any profession.

Quite the thrilling read! Dwarf Fortress is always a game I enjoy more reading or watching other people play than I enjoy when I play it myself and these embarkments have been really interesting. It seems that the war against the goblins will be brutal with these war dragons.

Conan the Dragontamer arrives from distant lands, seeking glory. And leadership. And Dragons to train for war.

A dwarf named "Conan" came to us early last year, and piddled around not doing much of anything. Today, however, they expressed interest in training the dragon and in joining the ranks of the fighting dwarves (having trained with them a time as a citizen)

We asked if Conan had any experience with either... and we're not certain they do.

For now they'll be assigned to crundle duty, and be allowed to work with the dragon exclusively. Conan will serve under the command of Militia Captain Sten until they've proved their worth!

I'd like to adopt a dwarf; TwoTankards because they drink with two tankards in the drinking hall. Any profession.

Another dwarf quickly namking a name for themselves is our manager, who has earned the nickname 'TwoTankards.' I expect the two tankards are to deal with the stresses that come with being outpost manager.

Our outpost has a lot of notable dwarves! Lucky us!

11th of Granite, Year 410

The forgotten beast extract battle has resulted in a stalemate, so far. The pterosaur is bleeding everywhere, though, so the warbler seems to be winning.

24th of Granite, Year 410

Militia Captain Sten surprised us today, cutting a perfect tiger iron gem. I suppose she'll be taking over as gem-cutter from now on, given how good she is at it.

7th of Slate, Year 410

Gronkle & ApplePie's eldest daughter's birthday was today -- her first day as an adult.

Most dwarves grow up wanted to be farmers -- they spend a lot of their childhood picking plump helmets in the tunnels, as it's the only job they're really allowed by dwarven law.

However, given that Pumpkin has dreams of starting a family, we've given her a job as a tavern keeper -- so she can meet people! Further, she's going to serve in the military, in her father's unit.

2nd of Felsite, Year 410

We had another accident deconstructing the tower roof, today...

A dwarf pulled the floor out from under another -- our book-keeper fell several stories and splatted worse than the carpenter did.

15th of Felsite, Year 410

We started building a dedicated hospital today, but we lost a patient -- one of the ones that originally fell off the tower. I guess their wounds weren't as minor as we thought. They lingered for a long while, though. Good dwarf.

I believe that brings the death-count up to 3 for Gloomy's tower.

22nd of Felsite, Year 410

Today we tested the mettle of the militia!

The guard crundles did their job and started shrieking when they spotted it -- a hideous werebear, much like the one rumored to have attacked Helmsfirst so many years ago!

Gronkle, Conan, Sten, and Pumpkin were dispatched to the gates. Pumpkin hid behind the wall during the battle, but the three experienced dwarves made efficient work of the beast.

I wouldn't say the battle was short, but it was effective.

After several rounds of back and forth combat -- wherin the beast didn't land any blows -- Conan distracted the beast, hacking away with his steel short sword. Meanwhile, Gronkle and Sten flanked it with their hammer and spear, respectively. The killing blow went to Sten -- a jab to the skull.

Gloomy requests a pimp-throne. The dwarves have no idea what that is, but it sounds cool they guess.

Gloomy's "pimp throne" was finished, today.

Well.. a temporary one. It's made of tunnel-tube, a naturally purplish cave-wood. The scholars tell us that this is about as "crunk" a material as one can get, save for actual purple stone.

Given that our carpenter fell off the tower, however, we've had to appoint a new one. This is their first chair -- in fact, their first carpentry project ever.

I expect it's... rickety, to say the least. We'll train them up and build another when they're experienced. We'll also see about importing some diamonds to stud it with -- the scholars say "that shit would be pimp as fuck."

The abominable smoke occasionally bathes our tower near the beach -- usually we can get the dwarves underground in time.

It's actually rather nice -- should serve as a decent deterrent, should the goblins ever learn we're here.

9th of Galena, Year 410

One of the dwarves produced an intersting craft, today -- a bow of artifact quality.

We'll have to decide who uses it -- until then, it'll rest in the stockpile, or maybe go on display.

11th of Galena, Year 410

Today a batch of dwarves were caught in the smoke -- they all left a trail of blood to the hospital, but all seem to be on track to survive. As far as I can tell, nobody lost any limbs, either!

16th of Galena, Year 410

Today is a full moon, and it has brought another were-creature -- this time spotted well in advance.

We must be near some lair of theirs.

Despite not being dispatched, Cheesecloth charged the beast and bit it, latching on for the entire battle. The real militia came soon after -- Sten managed to land the killing blow again.

25th of Limestone, Year 410

This year seems to be the year of beasts -- a massive, feathered ass was spotted in the caverns!

We decided to dispatch Sten, Pumpkin, Gronkle, and Conan, seeing as they've been doing so well.

Gronkle met the creature first, and drew it back to the stairs -- from there, Conan was able to strike the beast down with his steel sword. Huzzah!

19th of Sandstone, Year 410

It took a few weeks to haul the thing up from the depths, but TwoTankards was able to butcher the forgotten beast for us.

We'll be eating ass meat for weeks! Hooray!

8th of Timber, Year 410

We've finished construction of a more efficient necromancy chamber, just outside the body-storage area.

We captured a Gorlak -- a very sweet, rotund, tusked underground man-creature -- and locked it in the northern chamber. Bodies will be stored in the southern chamber, underneath cage-traps. The necromancer working that day will be placed in the center chamber.

The levers can toggle the bridges up and down, obstructing or allowing view of the gorlak and the bodies. The presence of the gorlak will then "motivate" the necromancer to work their magics on the bodies.

Zan, one of the scholars, volunteered to use the chamber first. We attempted to revive the bodies of the dead werebears.

The test was succesful, more or less! One of the bodies was reanimated, and captured in the trap. The other appears to be too mangled due to some... overzealous militia-dwarves.

We'll be displaying the animated remains of these beasts outside the tower, for the time being.

In other news, Gronkle has been professing his love for his hammer. How touching.

19th of Moonstone, Year 410

TwoTankards claimed a workshop and made a mini-forge, a sort of toy, out of blood thorn. He's claimed it as his. We're... going to let him keep it.

10th of Opal, Year 410

ApplePie's dog has seen it fit to chase boar-people all around the swamp.

Despite the workplace accidents (which may be due to the incredible amounts of vomit and spilled ale covering the worksite), the tower is coming along nicely.

We intend to stretch the main tower at least twice as tall. We've finished one of the auxilary structures -- a low watchtower we'll be able to station guards on.

We've decided that, once the main tower is built to a suitable height, we'll build a simple cone-shaped roof our of wood. We'll likely also add a pair of much smaller auxillary towers which can be only accessed from upper levels -- personal quarters for the necromancers themselves.

After some healthy recover time, ApplePie is back at it! Both legs and an arm are splinted, but... she's hobbling quickly enough.

We're a bit worried about another dwarf, though.

Hron's daughter likes to play make-believe with the dead bodies we stash in the necromancy chamber.

We... should lock that door.

We've also concluded our investigation into the workplace accidents at the tower. It seems booze is to blame! There are pools of it, and vomit, all over the damn place.

27th of Hematite, Year 411

We... have a lot of voracious cave crawlers. A literal pit-full.

We'll need to start butchering some for meat, it seems. Hopefully training some for other uses.

They're fully domesticated now, so generally pretty safe. Too safe.

2nd of Malachite, Year 411

We finished Gloomy's bedroom today. The artifact shale bed is there, as well as a desk, and some nice furniture. For now it's roughly midway up the planned tower -- that'll change as we finish the structure itself.

We've also finished setting up his throne-room. His pimp throne, and a pair of display cases are there. We've the artifact bow, and the artifact dwarf bone earring on display at the moment.

We've also tied up a few crundles -- the little devils will be nice handservants.

14th of Limestone, Year 411

We had a bit of an accident -- a troll get let out of its cage.

Thankfully our wrestling training is really paying off -- the citizens were able to put it down with a little help from the militia. No injuries!

11th of Sandstone, Year 411

While wandering the lower caverns we found a hole in the ground -- a pool of magma. Closer inspection revealed a VAST amount of it just below the surface.

We'll make use of this sometime, for certain.

For now, we've started dumping extra crundles into it. They have a -lot- of babies now and again, and they're not worth the effort to butcher. No meat when they're that small.

16th of Timber, Year 411

We've amassed quite a bit of knowledge about cave crawlers, and have decided some new training is in order.

(These can be trained as mounts during world-gen, but there's no option to do that during fortress mode. So, I've gone ahead and modified the RAWs just a bit to let them be trained as "war animals," which is the closest we can get).

The trainers got to work quickly -- we'll have a serious force of these creatures soon.

They reach their full size relatively quickly, too. 2 years -- not a long wait in the scheme of things.

12th of Moonstone, Year 411

While winter sets in above, cries of some beast come from below.

A massive bat was spotted, feasting on the dead bodies of crundles. We sent the militia down to deal with this one.

We had some wounds -- nothing the doctors couldn't fix -- but came out victorious. The kill again goes to Captain Sten.

2nd of Opal, Year 411

Today we caught an exceptional beast. A jabberer, cousin to the elk bird!

Its in rough shape, but its a truly mighty beast -- the size of an elephant, at least. Goblins have trained these things in the past, so I have no doubt we can as well.

The animal trainers were so excited, they started training it while the cage was being hauled upstairs!

6th of Opal, Year 411

Winter hasn't slowed the werebear attacks -- this one went for the dog tied up in our "zombie trap."

We'll leave it there for the time being.

8th of Obsidian, Year 411

One of the miners lost their mind after several months of demanding yarn cloth. We didn't have anything to sheer, so no yarn.

Luckily for us, he wandered into the bone pit? We've locked him in so nature can take its course.

So, one of my favorite plugins, There Will Be Text, is updated! The short of it is that everything involving text will be a lot easier to read now. Multilevel rendering is also making a comeback.

I've also updated to the new version:

Quote

Just some cleaning before we embark on the villain changes. There's a new offloading popup that can come up on the season change if you have enough activity in your world; it can take a little time in larger worlds, but that's all time that is no longer intermittent lag and it's also less time overall due to reduced redundancies. If you have an autosave, the offload will be incorporated into that, so autosaves might seem slightly longer (if so, you are also getting the same lag reduction.)

After seven Armok damned years, we finally caught a fish to write home about. A shark!

Apparently we're holding out for better, but it's a good start.

We'll likely dig a pond for it, and try and raise pups if we can catch a male.

1st of Felsite, Year 412

Turns out we have a gremlin problem. These little shits keep sneaking into the catacombs, letting dangerous animals out of their cages, and pulling levers. They also leave the doors unlocked for other nasties to get about.

We've set a gremlit trap for the little shits.

Gremlins can avoid traps, so we'll need to knock them out and push them into the cage mechanisms (we can't just kill them -- gotta experiment on them!)

So, we've placed a giant rock atop a support beam, surrounded it with cage traps, attached the support beam to a self-destruct lever, and put it all behind a locked door.

Those greedy shits won't be able to help themselves -- they'll pick the lock, pull the lever, and the boulder should knock them into one of the cage traps.

19th of Hematite, Year 412

It took almost two months, but the gremlin trap worked EXACTLY as planned! HAHA! Now we have a GREMLIN to decide what to do with.

... However, the animal trainers reported something interesting.

Gremlins are intelligent creatures. This could be -very- interesting.

We're gonna wait until we have a breeding pair before we experiment with training them. We've reset the trap, and put another one in the other caverns.

1st of Galena, Year 412

The caverns are actually proving a fruitful training ground. The crundles and other beasties make for good practice -- hopefully if we cut through enough of them, we'll find some creatures we actually want to capture.

Armok's beard there are a lot of crundles. Little shits.

10th of Galena, Year 412

Another disgusting beats was spotted in the caverns -- Pacata Umevafo Sanene yaralo! NOT THE FABLED PACATA UMEVAFO SANENE YARALO!

Instead of fighting this one head on, we made creative use of our drawbridges in order to release the massive wren-creature, and make it go straight toward the foul slug.

The two did battle, and the wren came out victorious.

The dwarves are sick of the wren squeaking in the access tunnels, so we assembled the militia and let it into the fort -- to face it head on.

The battle was fierce, to say the least. The creature met our dwarves headon in the mines, blasting its foul breath all over them, and engaging them in one on one combat.

At the end of it, we had lost two militia-dwarves, and had two with near mortal wounds. The rest of the dwarves were covered in open wounds and bruises from the beast's breath -- the poison seemed to make the blood vessels underneath the skin burst.

Unfortunately, as was the case with the Dragon Tamer Conan, this left our dwarves blind. We're unsure if we can heal it.

Conan was the most grievously injured by far. He survived -- just barely -- and was carried to the hospital.

The scene was... unpleasant, even after the fact. There was a trail of blood leading from the access tunnels all the way to the hospital.

Luckily we dwarves are a cleanly bunch -- we got to work cleaning it all up right away!

21st of Galena, Year 412

While cleaning up, we discovered that maybe Conan wasn't the worst off after-all. One of the surviving troops seems to have forgotten his foot back at the battle-site (sock, shoe and all).

24th of Galena, Year 412

While not able to do much about the poison, the doctors did well treating the wounded. Conan and the others will be fighting fit in no time (although they'll become proficient crutch-walkers, no doubt!).

26th of Galena, Year 412

... During the battle there was a bit of a miscommunication, and we forgot that Gronkle and ApplePie's other daughter, Bootstrap, needed some special materials.

She's... gone a touch mad. We've locked her in the tombs, where she'll no doubt die. D:

However, on the plus side:

In his down time, Conan has had lots of spare time with the dragon. He and it have formed a close bond.

We've decided to make a change to our animal population. We have a -lot- of animals -- close to 100, and that's mostly voracious cave crawlers.

We've trained 11 war animals, and we're going to cull the rest of the herd. We'll leave 2 males and 2 females, and cage them seperately. When we're ready, we'll let them out to breed again.

(FPS was crawling -- it'll be relatively quick to get the pop back up when we need it)

We should end up with years worth of food, which is a plus!

11th of Timber, Year 412

Unfortunately, the babbling in the catacombs stopped today. Bootstrap has left this world.

We've learned, however, that we can ask the engravers to make specific images -- we've instructed them to carve something about Bootstrap (and we'll do this for all future dead dwarves). The artist called the piece "The Spicy Messiah."

RIP

4th of Opal, Year 412

Goden Rockprison is a veteran of Helmsfirst, our best creature tamer, and leader of the citizens militia training-squad.

Unfortunately, that hamfisted shit-head is losing her temper and beating the ever loving shit out of everyone.

In fact, she's expressed that "she's in a constant state of eternal rage," because "she was caught in the rain" once. Armok's ass.

This asshole is so crazy, she beat one of the war crawlers to death.

She also beat a stoneworker to death -- a GOOD stoneworker.

We have very politely asked her to leave.

1st of Granite, Year 413

With a new year comes a renewed vision of the future. The fortress is doing well, and we've gotten our animal population under control. Hopefully we can catch the sea mons creatures we're looking for, get another gremlin, and another cave dragon.

Perhaps most importantly, we've finished the final floor of the central tower. Next, we put a roof on. After that, we'll start work furnishing it, and on the auxiliary structures. Eventually we'll get to the architectural accents.

Gronkle Is quite content with His Children. EspeciallyBootstrap, R.I.P, She Died mad and alone, as every dwarf should. He only hopes his remaining daughter couldbe more like his beloved hammer.

He proposes giving that shield that was made at some point in the past to Sten, for finishing so many fights. Gronkle also points out his leadership of the militia has been exceptional, And requests that we remove any windows from any barracks.He specifies further, that if there is no barracks, we should build one. And If there -is- one, without windows already, we must construct windows, for the express purpose of removing them. When asked why, he simply responds 'Windows are the eyes to the soul, and we can't have anyone seeing that, can we?!' Before bumbling off to polish his hammer.

Gloomy has been making ridiculous requests for the last week, the most absurd of them are:A small pool in his bedroom, a waterfall down the side of his tower, and a balcony in every direction for his floor of the tower.

After biting that werebeast some time back, Cheesecloth expresses that glory tastes good, and that anyone in the dining hall and kitchen when something bad enters the fortress should feel at ease when she is there.

He proposes giving that shield that was made at some point in the past to Sten, for finishing so many fights. Gronkle also points out his leadership of the militia has been exceptional,

Sten is attached to her shield already, and the artifact needs use, so Gronkle will carry it for the glory of the crundles that died to make it.

24th of Slate, Year 413

Another werebear attack left two of our war voracious cave cralwers dead. These things aren't letting up.

9th of Hematite, Year 413

We got an alder-wood roof on the tower. We may end up ripping it off, too -- the overseer liked the look of the stone.

It will serve for now, though.

7th of Limestone, Year 413

The militia met a gigant, poisonous, one-eyed frog in combat today. They made quick work of it with no serious injuries.

We've started work on our new housing complex -- directly below the tower. Everyone will start to move their things soon enough, and we should be mostly operating out of the tower.

1st of Galena, Year 413

Oglav put together a beautiful piece of armor -- not especially effective compared to steel, but a nice piece for display.

9th of Limestone, Year 413

A massive warthog with lidless eyes and poisonous spittle was spotted in the caverns -- we had the milita meet it like they have before. They made quick work of it, as usual. Excellent work.

20th of Limestone, Year 413

The depths keep throwing their worst beasts at us -- a massive dimetrodon came most recently. Due to its nasty dust attack, we sealed it in with the pterosaur.

Its dust is -foul- stuff. It causes body parts to just rot right off.

We'll leave it locked up for now.

23rd of Linestone, Year 413

We have so much food that we've decided to reduce our crundle population. We'll keep two breeding pairs if we ever have a need to repopulate them.

2nd of Sandstone, Year 413

With out king sending regular attacks to the Problematic Chambers, and our military more capable than I would have expected, we figured it's time to help out our people. We're sending the troops to Rightsmountain, with its ancient library.

18th of Sandstone, Year 413

The troops returned today, and found no resistance. Now is the time to strike!

With Sten doing so well, we think its only fair if they be given a true leadership opportunity. We're sending her alone to take over the fort -- she'll likely populate it herself with her own chosen dwarves.

We send her forth in gem-clad steel, ready!

27th of Sandstone, Year 413

We've received word that Sten has taken control of the fortress. Huzzah!

28th of Timber, Year 413

Our first student-teacher relationship has formed in the library -- we wonder if Zan will pass on the secrets of life and death. We'll keep a close eye.

25th of Moonstone, Year 413

Today... was a challening day.

Cheesecloth went absolutely mad, throwing one of the most vicious tantrums we've ever seen. She started by horribly beating Slagbottom, who soonafter died in the hospital.

Slagbottom's body was very quickly moved to the catacombs -- we'll call this an accident, for now.

The engravings were done by the one and only Conan, who, is recovering fairly well. Unfortunately, he's been left with long-lasting nerve damage that makes walking without crutches impossible.

He is, however, getting better at it!

A dwarf named Zan has assumed Slagbottom's former position. We're unsure what to expect from this dwarf.

8th of Opal, Year 413

We've moved Gloomy's personal quarters to the top of the tower, his throne room one floor below, and the library/study just below that.

Gloomy has been making ridiculous requests for the last week, the most absurd of them are:A small pool in his bedroom, a waterfall down the side of his tower, and a balcony in every direction for his floor of the tower.

We're still working on his requests -- but we'll get to some of them, no doubt.

14th of Opal, Year 413

Cheesecloth is at it again -- this time, she punched TwoTankards in the head so hard that he died.

And requests that we remove any windows from any barracks.He specifies further, that if there is no barracks, we should build one. And If there -is- one, without windows already, we must construct windows, for the express purpose of removing them. When asked why, he simply responds 'Windows are the eyes to the soul, and we can't have anyone seeing that, can we?!' Before bumbling off to polish his hammer.

We also have a very clear order from the Militia Commander -- even if it is strange.